I had an odd moment today. I was making up a lesson plan for Monday, when I’ll be out of the classroom on Professional Development. As I was saving the file under “apr03”, I had a powerful flashback to the days when I used to do this almost every day. I would stack my little memoirs through the month, little bouquets of memory against the dying of the light. Or at least, against the dying of my brain cells, so often described in squealing detail in the same entries.

Tomorrow is the first instalment of Dirktoberfest. We’ll be making tinfoil hats; then the Boy & I will go home to get a good night’s sleep for church and the second instalment (High Tea at a swank hotel). Why am I giving up dancing on Dirktoberfest, one of my High Holy Days? (Or at least, one of my High Hemline Days)? Because if I am to get my son kitted up, get myself in a nice dress, and encourage my husband to put on the sharp suit, I need to be awake for the festivities. And alert, so that Blake’s customary destructiveness can be curtailed. Or at the very least, enjoyed.

I continue to feel caught between two social groups: the house and car and career set, who have lives and kids and money…and the “there’s a 6 in the morning now?” perpetual adolescent set, who see no problem blowing the entire weekend on tomfoolery. (With big exceptions made for Dirk & Stacy and a handful of others, who pursue foolishness with intelligence and earnestness.) I don’t really have the stamina for that anymore, and I certainly don’t have the heart for it. It’s one thing to deadhead through an office job when you can get wasted 4 days a week, and it’s another thing entire when you get up at 5:30 every day because there’s no point in wasting another minute of what’s sure to be an interesting day. Maybe you can wait for the interesting, maybe you’d like to see how interesting 8 a.m. could be, but you have a kid who hasn’t seen enough days to grow bored with the parade. And all of the drinking stories start to seem childish. Lame. Boring. Tinfoil hats are one thing; this is clearly the work of those who are interested in living life to its zestiest. Just drinking, though…haven’t we been down this road? Isn’t there another way to fun?

Anyway, this is a lot of what I’ve been thinking about this week. I’ve been alternating between numbness (work) and exhaustion (home), with a brief interlude of frenzied excitement that happens each day when I leave school and feel the first puff of warm air on my skin. I’m wrung out, and it’s making me bitter. Much like the kitchen washcloth that should be replaced, I’ve gone sour.

Therapy? Playdoh. Sleep. Chocolate. And a new system to organize my yarn, starting tomorrow. I think this should help me into the right frame of mind, come tinfoil hat making time.

- 0 comments/hedgehogs -

- Rocketbride's adventure of 3/31/2006 08:23:00 p.m.